Microsoft Corp. raised the game for artificial intelligence developers in November with updates to its Azure cloud computing platform that included Fabric, a platform for integrating vital data assets with AI operations.

In partnership with Microsoft, SAS Institute Inc. brought Decision Builder, a cloud-based intelligent decisioning solution, to Fabric as a unified analytics solution that leverages Azure Data Factory, Azure Synapse Analytics and Microsoft PowerBI.

“It’s a very deep collaboration that we have and, as part of our Microsoft Fabric platform, which is a truly open platform, we have had SAS participate with us as a design partner,” said Dipti Borkar (pictured, right), vice president and general manager of fabric strategic ISVs, Azure Databricks and app development at Microsoft. “Last year at Ignite we introduced this … and we’ll be sharing more over the next several months.”

Borkar spoke with theCUBE Research’s John Furrier and Dave Vellante at SAS Innovate, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. She was joined by Gavin Day (left), executive vice president, office of the CEO, at SAS, and they discussed how the partnership has provided customers with greater options for building the AI stack. (* Disclosure below.)

SAS’s Gavin Day and Microsoft’s Dipti Borkar talk with theCUBE during SAS Innovate 2024.

SAS Decision Builder and Microsoft OneLake drive collaboration

The integration of SAS Decision Builder with Microsoft Fabric is designed to provide a simplified experience across data sources with a set of tools for AI decisioning. It leverages a set of purpose-built SAS offerings that have been used for a wide range of use cases, including credit scores for loan approvals and personalized digital marketing.

“SAS Decision Builder is built on top of SAS Decisioning,” Day said. “We’re powering banks around the world where all of the credit lending decisions are going through intelligent decisioning. It’s the optionality of customers using the technology that’s fit for purpose for them. Sometimes it’s standalone SAS. Sometimes it’s SAS within Azure, and we love that.”

The collaboration comes with a message: Customers should be able to virtualize and aggregate data from all sources. The foundation of Microsoft Fabric is OneLake, an open data lake platform that acts as a single source of truth.

“No longer do you have walled gardens of data; it truly is open,” Borkar said. “Your data might be in Azure, of course, but it could be in other clouds. And it comes together in OneLake, and all of these workloads run natively on top. The open platform, that’s where SAS comes in as a partner to really bring in a native experience along with our other Microsoft workloads.”

Companies looking to build and integrate AI into their technology stacks are also seeking the simplest and most direct path to deriving insights from data. The partnership between SAS and Microsoft provides yet another example of how generative AI is rapidly transforming the compute landscape.

“The game has changed,” Borkar said. “The number of capabilities that you can build today in days, not years, with generative AI and with the tools we have today is just phenomenal. With partnerships like this, we’re making it super easy for customers, for startups all the way to large enterprises, to build new experiences for their customers.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE Research’s coverage of SAS Innovate:

(* Disclosure: Microsoft Corp. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither Microsoft nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE